Someone mentioned in the Spirit route map discussion how the official Spirit route maps recently have adopted a similarity to Dilo's, by including an inset of a nearby vertical projection.

Interestingly, I've also noticed a recent change in the Opportunity maps, with those including a shaded area highlighting the larger drifts, similar to Bill's maps.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-...ity-sol630.html

As much as Victoria will produce tremendous data, it should be realized that Victoria is a point along the traverse and not the endpoint. In a geological traverse significant outcrops and major changes in lithology and structure are examined and cataloged. The MER planners are striking, for the most part, a reasonable balance between between making progress and gathering data. I thinbk that Erebus is an important point along the way as we've seen subtle, yet significant, changes in the evaporite and the blueberries. The current stop of Olympia is clearly in the "North Erebus" province, which is likely transitional between the "Erebus Highway and points north" and the Mogollon province.

It would be a shame if Oppy rushed past Mogollon and made good progress towards Victoria. She can break down at any time and we might end up with a few pictures of distant outcrops and a lot of pictures of ripples and drifts and not much more. Maximize the science along the way.

--Bill

And something more - given the vertical profile of the area, it is thought, that the evaporite layers at Victoria are of the same depth as these in Endurance, unlike those at Erebus, which are much higher. So even if Oppy reach Victoria, it can turn out, that there's nothing new in terms of geology (but the pictures will be awesome :-))

Although I/we talk about moving "down section", I'm not 100% sure exactly where we are in the section. We've not been able to look at the evaporite in enough detail to spot marker beds. Victoria, based on the topography, has to expose lower sections in the evaporite unit.

To add to the quandry, there are also possible lateral changes in the evaporite as well as vertical.

--Bill

sol645 update

So NASA/JPL guys can you now prleeeease step on it and drive....
It's been so long ago since I last heard word VICTORIA CRATER!!!
START DRIVING PLEASE!!!

Nope, there are tons of interesting geology science around Mogollon rim.. ..before heading toward to Victoria Crater....

Rodolfo

I'm... dreaming of an Erebus... Christmas
and several weeks beyond that too
where the views are dreamy
and rocks are creamy
and blue.. berries sparkle like they're new...

If it is any consolation, every day the rover is alive is a day closer to the arrival at Victoria crater. It's all the same whether that day is spent poking around some interesting rocks or navigating round dunes. The rover is still alive and the plan is to go to Victoria - with some surveys along the way.

At this point in time - after nearly two years with both rovers reasonably healthy, the chances only improve that they will both reach their next medium term goals, "home plate" and Victoria respectively.

Perhaps someone here who is an expert on reliability and failure analysis could back that up with some figures.

Except that Opportunity's batteries only have a finite number of charges in them, so even if nothing catastrophic happens, she will eventually reach the point where her batteries will no longer hold enough charge to operate.

I seem to recall the batteries have about a 1000 cycle lifespan. Is that correct?

1000 charge cycles is listed in a few places. I believe the design requirement was only 300 cycles but the type selected (happily) seems to be rated for around 1000.

One thing that hasn't been established (as far as I can tell) is whether the loss of the batteries will be completely fatal. Does anyone know what will actually happen when the voltage\charge storage level on the batteries falls below the levels needed for them to actually work? Can the rovers operate on Solar Power alone?

I asked that same question way back, and I believe the answer I got was no, you need the batteries.

I guess they're not going to fail all at once, so there will be a period of time where there batteries will continue to function but not be able to retain a full charge. But when the time comes, and the writing is on the wall, they will reach a point where the diminishing returns will no longer justify the funding, and the project will be shut down and the rover switched off.

Here's hoping that it happens when she's perched on the edge of Victoria crater after one last panoramic vista.

I wouldn't worry about the batteries too much. The manufacturer claims that more than 2000 deep cycles are nominal. Besides that there is a 50% redundancy in capacity build in and to be really sure each MER rover has 2 battery packs. Of course they do degrade over time, mainly due to oxidation which increases the internal resistance of the cells. This starts from day #1, which is even prior to launch! (The batteries were used at launch and during cruise) However, the degradation and remaining lifetime of the batteries is predictable and we haven't heard anything about it sofar from the MER team.

I was quite surprised at Pathfinder dying from battery failure. I never understood or heard why the design used such few-cycle-lifetime batteries.

Here is my initial edition of the Olympia-Mogollon route base map. I've highlighted the known dunes, ripples and sand. This is a small JPEG file; if there is interest, I'll provide a 750K TIF file (no jpg artifacts) for group use.

I've added the "known" sand features and will add more as they are verified-- sometimes the sand here is the same tone as the bedrock. Changes and suggestions are always welcome.

--Bill

Sensible progress in the last Sols!
Click to view attachment

And now, look to this detail of Sol649 Panorama (east direction), I see a macro "mini-crater" in the center and amazing zig-zag holes in the foreground terrain! (I suspect they are correlated each other)
Click to view attachment

Dilo: I don't know if it's just me, but I think that red line showing the route is a little too hard to see on the overview map. I tried tweaking it and made it yellow and I think it looks better.

Or maybe it's just because I'm color blind



Minor nitpick, but just wanted to point it out on your otherwise great route maps! Keep it up!

Dot.dk, is a good suggestion!

Isn't this view looking towards the west/southwest ?

Yes, (damn!) I often confuse East with West, can someone explain me why?
Anyway, some ideas suggestion on these features?

There is a rule of thumb.

When the Oppy is poking around East Erebus, I identify the East side with high ripples and the West as relatively flat with waves of ripples and South is where there are most light surface.

The most probable route that the Oppy will be heading toward south trying to approach to Mogollon's rims. Cross fingers so the Team rovers won't get sucked of tall dunes as the previous route.

Rodolfo

Thanks, Rodolfo.
We are definitely going to South, following outcrop path: here the updated route map, where I corrected also Sol649 position based on orientation respect to the dark Mogollon Patch, highlighted by light-blue arrow in the satellite image.
Click to view attachment
About "macro-mini crater", discussion is ongoing on another thread, so don't mind...

[/quote]

Is it my imagination or has JPL reverted to an earlier traverse map for Opportunity on its Where Are The Rovers Now? site. It's now at Sol 591 which was posted way back on 22 September. But I thought they'd posted a more recent one showing Opportunity further round Erebus.

======
Stephen

It is not just your imagination! I noticed that too

Maybe they had a look at Dilos maps and decided to redo their own

Here is one from SOL 624:
http://shoreline.eng.ohio-state.edu/album/...003/opp_624.jpg

It's a possibility. Once newer official maps are posted, we can check again its accuracy agains the ones handled here.

Remember that the discrepancy between the official and Dilo's maps was already noted here.

New traverse maps
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-...nity/index.html

Maybe this belongs here... another installment in my set of maps from earlier in the mission. This is a 100 by 50 m region around Fram crater. tracks are visible in part of it to show the route in this area. The positional control here is an underlying MOC image.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Ooh! That one worked out particularly well, without the "sunburst" effect some other similar maps sometimes have. Nice blending between local and MOC images.

Airbag

Abso-friggin-lutely phenomenal work, Phil! Thanks for sharing!

New Oppy Route Maps from JPL 12/5/05

PIA03616: Partway to 'Victoria'

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03616

This image shows the route that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had driven through its 659th Martian day, or sol, (Dec. 1, 2005) relative to the potential destination of "Victoria Crater" farther south. The base image is a portion of a mosaic (previously released as PIA07506) combining images from the Mars Observer Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, the Thermal Emission Imaging System on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, and Opportunity's own Descent Image Motion Estimation System. The scale bar at lower right is 800 meters (one-half mile).

PIA03609: Opportunity Traverse Map, Sol 656

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03609


Annotated Opportunity Traverse Map

This image shows the route that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has taken from its landing site inside "Eagle Crater" to its position on its 656th Martian day, or sol, (Nov. 27, 2005) at the edge of "Erebus Crater." The base image is a portion of a mosaic (previously released as PIA07506) combining images from the Mars Observer Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, the Thermal Emission Imaging System on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, and Opportunity's own Descent Image Motion Estimation System. The scale bar at lower right is 800 meters (one-half mile). As of sol 656, Opportunity had driven a total of 6,502 meters (4.04 miles).

This is another part of an Opportunity base map for route mapping. It's incomplete and low resolution here, a work in progress, but I'll post a complete high res version later.

This is Endurance crater. Two big pans were made from nearly opposite points on sols around 97 and 120 (I'm not looking at my notes here...) I took the first pan, plus a MOC cPROTO image, greatly enlarged, and reprojected the pan to fit the MOC image. This was not from a terrain model, but by rubber-sheeting using a thin plate spline method and 100 tie points. I'm using the geocorrection module in a GIS to do this. Incidentally I really need a good freeware rubber-sheeting program with a spline option (polynomials don't work properly for this). Any suggestions?

The first pan gives great results everywhere except right under the rover where the slope is too distorted. When the second pan is done, it will fill that gap. I'm working at much higher resolution than this image shows, of course.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Absolutely fantastic!!

Thanks Phil!

Awesome picture. I don't see any Oppy's track. Shall anyone point which side is north. I think that Oppy entered into Endurance Crater on the south side?

Rodolfo

You won't see any tracks as, as Phil said this is made using the first of the two pans made before Oppy entered Endurance.

This being Phils work I would be fairly sure that North is up.

Didn't Oppy enter Endurance from the west side? Burns cliff and 'escape hatch' are are on the south side.

Damn Phil. That is nice work.

Congrats Phil. A terrific work in progress!

Nico

Thanks for the nice comments. North is at the top... the pans were made from the west and southeast sides, and Opportunity entered and exited the crater on the southwest.

Here's part of the same image (with a few adjustments) blown up to illustrate the real resolution. This view contains most of the area traversed by Opportunity, but not Karatepe which has to come from the other pan.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Am I the only one who finds the route around Endurance a little confusing - I still cant pick out Ellesmere, Wopmay etc from overhead views, it's quite confusing.

Doug

Doug, I'll do some labelling later. It's true the press release stuff has not been great in this regard. But that's where we come in.

Phil

Top stuff :0

Doug

Click to view attachment

(Yes, it is a word, just not a real one.)

Let's not overlook the great work of Pando and Dilo and Tesheiner on mapping Mars! And all our panorama-makers, without whom maps are much harder to make.

Here is an annotated version of my last map. There must be many more names, but these are the ones which showed up on JPL graphics and status reports.

In fact, I would be very interested in other names if people would care to add them, from sources like the targeting info etc. Actually, we really need a systematic collection and graphic presentation of all these names used during the mission.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Absolutely right, and that mapping work has attracted almost 97,000 views as of today!! Nice one.

True, true. But they didn't do any rubber-sheeting! And plus, there can be only one #1. However, if you prefer the award (ok, so it's not much of an award) go to someone else, that can easily be arranged.

I appreciate it, um3k, I just don't want to take all the glory.

I'm having a hard time getting a map of the west outer rim of Endurance to come together. But eventually...

Phil

No one here will ever be overlooked. It's just your turn to be glorified.

I just wish I better understood more details of how you and others are creating these lovely maps. I can do the transformation of panoramas to other projections, but nicely tying the resultant pieces together seems to be the tricky part. I have no desire to compete with you guys. But I would like to understand, as I suspect others would.

Can someone toss us a bone? A rubber one will do.

Take my recent maps as examples - Dilo might be doing it differently.

First, I create a base map, a greatly blown up MOC image, to get the geometry right.

Then if it's practical, I will paste onto it the JPL vertical projections, if there are any. But this is often not practical because they rarely fit together properly. Each one looks good alone, but if you overlay them the distortions in each one become very apparent. That's because they are based on oversimplified topographic models (usually just a plane). But if I can I'll use one or more of those as a starting point.

Then I'll make polar projections of each available pan. These can then be distorted - rubber-sheeted if necessary using multiple tie points, or just stretched and skewed a bit in simple cases - to fit the MOC and any vertical projections. The trick is to get a good match of position to as many features in the MOC as possible. The hole in the centre of each pan can usually be filled with another image, front hazcam during approach or whatever.

Finally, the seams are suppressed by carefully matching tones across boundaries between the various fragments of the photomosaic.

What I'm describing works much better in very flat areas like Anatolia than it does in the areas of high dunes such as Opportunity's current location. If there's a lot of local relief the joins between different reprojected pans are much more difficult.

I do all the graphic work in Photoshop, and rubbersheet using the GCPWorks module in PCI v6.2, a remote sensing/GIS program. PCI has a much more modern version called Geomatica, but it's much more complex and tedious to use. They could make money selling their old GCPWorks as a stand-alone, but the ^$#$ won't do it. I've tried to tell them they are passing up on a good opportunity. That's why I really want a better rubber-sheet program.

Phil

I'm looking forward to your polar projections of the bedrock areas at Olympia/Mogollon. There is an interesting fabric to the pattern of fractures, etc, that would be easier to interpret as a polar.

--Bill

Like this one?

Sol 649. I think the original pan was by jvandriel. I did a bit of cosmetic work on the horizon, not very carefully. I left it south-up.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Or this?

Sol 651. By the way, does the rocky mound by the wheels have a name?

North up on this one.

Phil

Click to view attachment